Google change the rules.

Your business needs a new website today.

Join us to learn how your business can partner with Amplified and The Billings Gazette to help more potential customers find your business online.

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Do you know what customers are saying online about your business? Now more than ever it is important  to know what image is being painted about your business through reviews on Google+, Yelp, and much more. 

Gazette Digital Solutions will simplify the process by:

• Ensuring that your data is accurate and consistent wherever a potential customer or search engine might be looking to find your business
• Listening to what consumers are saying about your business on top social sites (like Google+, Yelp, City Search and dozens of others)
• Saving you time and reputation with quick responses on your behalf with standard or written replies—depending on your specific needs—to respond to feedback, good or bad

• Responding to online feedback
• Providing ability to track competitors’ deals and social activity
• Seeing how frequently your company is mentioned compared to your competitors
• Ongoing review of directory information across multiple websites and directories to ensure accurate and consistent data

Your employees are working harder than ever! 
Take this opportunity to thank them for everything they do. Be apart of a very special section featuring companies - large and small - paying tribute to those who keep them running...the employees! 

The Labor Day 2013 section will insert full circulation on Labor Day, Monday, September 2. Let 103,037* readers of The Billings Gazette know how much you appreciate you employees. 

In addition to the print publication, the online version will appear on billingsgazette.com/specialsections for one month. 

Investment Options: 
Full page $1,200
Half page - horizontal and vertical $800
Quarter page $500
Eighth page $275

Ad Copy Deadline: Friday, August 23
Publication Date: Monday, September 2

Bonus! Reserve your space early and your business will be a part or our promotional campaign.   

The Newspaper Association of America released the findings of a landmark study by Nielsen that compares the ability of major media, including television, radio and social media, to engage audiences. Chris Burnett-Wolle of Nielsen shared the results of the study, which looked at consumer engagement with media content and compares each medium’s ability to engage consumers with advertising. Some key findings: 

• Newspaper media — in print and online— scored the highest of all media on overall engagement. 
• Newspapers and their websites stood out most in the efficacy of advertising. 
• Newspaper Print ads gets noticed more than all other media, drive the highest purchase Intent and Americans think local newspapers are the best place to go for Black Friday information.
  
• Average score among U.S. adult consumers for newspaper media consistently exceeded those of all other media.

Read the full results of the Nielsen National Cross-Media Engagement Study. 

See original article here.

Most social networks, such as Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+,  Vine, and Tumblr have used hashtags for a long time now. When a hashtag is included in a post, clicking on the hashtaged word pops out a feed that aggregates others’ posts that have been tagged with the same phrase.

Hashtags have become a huge part of Internet slang and the users stream content from other sources such as Instagram and status updates from Twitter.  Hashtags are already all over Facebook, so the launch of clickable hashtags on Facebook makes perfect sense for every user.

Facebook users can now search for a specific hashtag from the search bar and compile posts directly from the hashtag feed. If a user only uses hashtags once in a blue moon, the hashtags used will also help Facebook learn a little bit more about that user's likes and dislikes, which allows for a greater depth of targeting. 

Advertising Age speculates that “hashtags might also ultimately bolster Facebook's Graph Search since hashtag mentions provide a clearer expression of a user’s interest vs. Likes: ‘Likes are flawed signals, since users sometimes click on them arbitrarily or to satisfy a social obligation. But posting with a hashtag could be seen as a more tangible expression of affinity and could thus help to make graph search into a useful product.’”

Tips on Using Facebook Hashtags:

• Use FB hashtags like you do on Twitter. This will be exceptionally helpful when it comes to breaking stories, weather, and sports.
• Research hashtags to find out what people are saying about specific topics, find out what is trending with that topic, and learn more about user’s insights on that topic.
• Don’t overuse hashtags in postings, as it makes the content hard to read. Pick the main keywords/topics and highlight those as hashtags.
• Teach your fans how to use them in case they aren’t familiar with seeing hashtags on Facebook.
• Streamline your postings by setting up the post with hashtags for the sites like Twitter, and minimize scheduling time by keeping the same format, hashtags included, for facebook as well.
• Encourage creative engagement around a hashtag, and be sure to instruct your fans to make their posts public when using the hashtag so you and your fans can see the conversation.
• The change for Facebook to allow clickable hashtags will inevitably help Facebook become a more useful tool for real-time content, breaking news, trending stories, and more targetable advertising content so embrace it and use it as best as you can!

Read More about Hashtags on Facebook:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/6/12/4423200/facebook-adds-hashtag-support 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/facebook-adds-clickable-hashtags-newsfeed-posts/story?id=19383505#.Ucmw8ZyEWyw

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-adds-twitter-style-hashtags-user-timelines/242059/

According to Search Engine Watch, Google’s Distinguished Engineer Matt Cutts announced a new ranking update targeting spam queries, specifically on mobile. 

What can cause your website to drop in page ranks:

• When a desktop page redirects smartphone users to an irrelevant page on a smartphone-optimized website.
• When sites serve content to desktop users accessing a URL, but show an error page to smartphone users.

Google suggests testing your site on various mobile devices and operating systems to catch errors before they cost you.

Don't let your business slip. Contact us today to get your business mobile ready!  .

Click here to read the full article.